This invention relates in general mountings for the road wheels of automotive vehicles and, more particularly, to a mounting that incorporates a drum brake and a disk brake.
Many automobiles of current manufacture have disk brakes at all four wheels. These brakes function well as service brakes for stopping vehicles or retarding their motion and are preferred over drum brakes in that respect. But they are not effective as park brakes. Automobiles with disk brakes at all four wheels also have drum brakes at their rear wheels to serve as park brakes.
The typical rear wheel mounting (FIGS. 6 and 7) that contains both disk and drum brakes has a hub provided with a flange and a spindle or shaft which projects from the flange into a housing and rotates on a bearing contained within the housing. The housing has a flange along which it is secured against a suspension upright or some other structure on which both the disk and drum brakes are mounted. Both brakes operate against a brake rotor that is attached to the flange of the hub along with the road wheel. The brake rotor of course has a disk and also a drum, with the disk projecting radially from the drum and producing a xe2x80x9cdrum-in-hatxe2x80x9d configuration. The housing in which the hub rotates and particularly its flange leave little room for the drum brake. Indeed, to accommodate the drum brake the housing must be reduced to a minimal size and the bearing within it as well.
Many of these vehicles also have antilock braking systems and some even have traction control systems. These systems monitor the rotation of the vehicle wheels to distribute the braking effort between the wheels in a manner which retards uncontrolled skids and transfers the engine torque to the driven wheel which has the best traction. In a system in common use (FIG. 6), a probe projects through the housing of the hub assembly to monitor the rotation of the hub. The probe emerges from the housing within the confines of the brake drum and at the drum brake, making the interior of the hub all the more confining and the routing of the electrical probe cable difficult.
The present invention resides in a mounting for a road wheel, and that mounting includes a one-piece housing having a radial portion and an axial portion. The mounting also includes a hub having a shaft that extends into the axial portion of the housing and a flange located outside the housing and offset axially from the radial and axial portions. In addition, the mounting includes a bearing between the axial portion of the housing and the shaft of the hub. The mounting may also include a brake that is mounted on the housing and has an arcuate shoe that curves around the axial portion of the housing. The invention further resides in the housing itself.